


Who Knew That You Would Follow Me?

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Harry writes poetry, I wrote this too quickly, Louis is cute, M/M, Perrie and Danielle sound like middle aged black women sometimes idek?!, Zayn is brooding the entire time, at least it's finished, oh well, sigh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 15:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry writes poetry and Louis watches him work and Harry might like Louis a little bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Knew That You Would Follow Me?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dontstopeating](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontstopeating/gifts), [don't stop](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=don%27t+stop).



> Title from When Will You Go by The Dodos
> 
> I don't know what really happened here and it's too rushed and sigh sigh sigh but you know it's finished for the time being so.
> 
> Other things I didn't think through: tommo-cupcake.tumblr.com

It's the light tap of his keyboard filling up the small room, the sound unfurling from its slumber and stretching, drifting until it reaches Harry's ears to pause and sleep again. It's this constant back and forth, this constant waking and napping and tapping and silence of the end of one sentence and the start of another that keeps him on edge. The words that form on the page, unexpected and unarmed, but prepared and steady and he loves it, enjoys every aspect.

Louis, however, hadn't witnessed that yet, so, "And that's why I'm not allowed in the Knitting Club again."

Maybe Harry preferred the sound of Louis' soft voice, but he can't be sure, "It's your own fault, really."

"How? I knitted a sweater for my penis. I'd been doing a pretty solid job, too. I think I was up to their standards." He picks a stray thread on Harry's bedspread, pulling it taught, "Don't see any reason not to let me in."

"You asked the teacher to measure your dimensions."

"Yeah, but she didn't." He shrugs, "Her loss."

Harry chuckles, reaching for a rebuttal and then retreating in hopes of a comfortable silence, and, "What are you writing?"

So the silence seems out of reach, too.

"A poem."

"Obviously," Louis pops another chip into his open mouth, nearly missing, "But about what?"

"You can see after.”

Louis hums in response, missing this time and disregarding the fallen chip in favor of speaking, "Promise?"

Harry sighs fondly (and the fact that he can do that continues to bewilder him) and nods slowly, setting his fingers down on the keyboard as his knuckles twitch with anticipation. Of what, he doesn't know, because his brain hasn't spotted any ideas yet.

"Let's do something." And who knows if he’ll ever get a chance to write.

"We've done enough somethings."

"We haven't done any somethings."

“Louis.”

So Louis looks out the window with his head straining to stay in the air as his stomach is laid flat on the blanket and he’s watching a bird flutter across the window before laying back down once it disappears. He releases a breath and Harry watches the duvet wrinkle under the warm air and Louis really does look great in the sunlight.

Harry loves this side of Louis. Sure, the constant energy he carries with him is entertaining and the passion he has for making everyone happy is endearing, but.

The noises get to be too much, the voices grinding Harry’s patience and Louis can always tell. He doesn’t always do anything in consequence, but he can tell, and Harry thinks that sometimes that’s enough.

“Harry?” The boy is whispering and Harry’s heart flutters.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to go home.”

Harry lets a whine of disapproval slip from his lips, and he tries desperately afterward to cover it with a cough, but Louis notices regardless.

“It’s nearly 11, babe.”

And, okay. Babe. Louis can do whatever he wants. Harry can hang onto that word for a while.

“Mhmm,” He mumbles, standing to stretch, “Yeah, you should go.”

Louis smiles, propping himself up to resupply his bag with the textbooks he never bothered to open, “Bye, Harry!”

 “Yeah, bye.”

Harry wants to say he’ll miss him (and he always does, just a little), but he knows he’ll see Louis again tomorrow, so it’s hard to make the thoughts rational.

\---

Harry’s always found that Louis isn’t like the other people he hangs around, and maybe that explains more than he’s willing to admit.

But here’s Zayn, brooding as always with a hint of a smirk he won’t release until Harry says something especially innocent and he’s got a cigarette dangling from the edge of his lip as he reaches into his bag to pull out a book before standing back up.

“Here,” He shoves the book into Harry’s hands, reaching up quickly to keep the cigarette from falling, “It’s excellent.”

And Harry knows they have different tastes in books (Zayn going for the more poetic and abstract genres, Harry for the ones to make you reflect), but he’s willing to try it.

“Thanks.” He turns it over, _A Coney Island of the Mind_.

”It’s basically just a bunch of poems,” Zayn lets go of a breath, smoke suffocating the air around them, “But they’re excellent.” He taps the cover, “You’ll enjoy it.” Harry can feel Zayn slowing his words, trying to make this as simple as possible so as to not scare him off. Harry writes poetry and he reads poems, but he was never one to stumble through them in book from.

“Cool.” He sets the book on the ground and sits next to it, tapping rhythmically on the concrete. He eyes the cigarette’s end, watches it flare up before receding in on itself, and Harry sympathizes with it.

“You want one?” Zayn offers, hand hovering over his pocket to pull out the box, and Harry thinks before shaking his head and he’s a bit disappointed in himself for having to think it over at all. But then again, it doesn’t look half-bad, really.

Then Zayn coughs and, yeah. No.

“It’s not that bad,” He shrinks down the side of the building, “Really, it’s not. Calming and all that.”

“I don’t want to have to depend on anything.” Harry sighs, and he can already see himself decomposing with each puff and he won’t put himself through that.

Zayn takes another puff and fuck does he look good. Harry wonders fleetingly if Louis smokes.

“Whatever.”

\---

Lunch won’t ever be a good point of Harry’s day, seeing as the both his food and his company are equally unappetizing. Zayn doesn’t have this period, so he’s stuck with Perrie and Danielle and, yeah, they’re nice, but they don’t know much about anything that doesn’t directly involve them and Harry doesn’t know what to do with that. So he smiles pretty and eats quickly and nods just to keep them interested.

“Harry, really. You’ve been staring this entire time.”

“Go talk to the boy!”

Harry shakes his head with a chuckle before diving back into his burger that really does taste awful, but it’s carbs and he feels like he should at least get it down his throat. “Really, girls, it’s not like that.” Because it really, really isn’t.

“All I know is that you’ve been pining over this Tommo kid for ages and you’ve never said a word to him.”

Perrie nods in agreement, standing up to throw away her tray before thinking twice and taking Harry’s, too.

“She’s right, you know.” Perrie states, sliding into her seat, “You need to say hi.”

“I suppose,” Because even trying to explain at this point seems futile.

“You’re going to go mad with all these feeling pent up inside of you.”

And he really wishes he told people more so they wouldn’t feel so obligated to make assumptions off false information, but he doesn’t know if he has enough oxygen to do so.

“Mhmm,” He mumbles, finger tracing the stains on the table.

“We’ll get you to talk.” Danielle announces, drowning herself in milk.

“One of these days,” Perrie finishes, smiling blissfully.

“Okay, girls.” Harry entertains, hands brushing against the side of his pants to wipe off the crumbs that probably aren’t there.

\---

“How?”

Louis rolls the edge of the pillow between his fingers, leaning up slightly, “How what?”

“How did you get all of these girls to fall for you?”

“What do you mean?”

                                                                                   

Harry sighs, shaking out the unwelcome feeling settling into his bones, “I mean,” He sighs, “Like, I come to school and every other girl I see has something to say about you.”

Louis laughs lightly, smiling broadly before sitting up a little taller, “It’s the hair.” He runs his fingers through the ends, “What can I say? Your hair’s average, but _me._ Now I’ve got some shiny locks.” He giggles, laying back down and drumming his fingers on the now crinkled bedspread.

Harry grumbles, turning back to the laptop as he types out a few lines of utter gibberish so he doesn’t have to stare at a blank page next time he bothers to turn around. “You know what I mean.”

“Really don’t,” And where the fuck is this boy finding all of these chips around his house, “If I remember correctly, which I always do, quite a few girls around school have mentioned you.”

Harry flings his arms out, exasperated, “ _Yeah,_ but. I’m _cute,_ they say. They would never date me, they would never have _sex_ with me,” Louis gasps in mock offense, covering his ears, “What’s the point if they won’t even do anything to me?” And Harry isn’t sure he’s actually talking about girls at all at this point, but the faces Louis’ pulling are enough to compensate.

“Who cares either way?”

“I do!”

“Don’t.”

Harry shrugs like that fixes everything and, yeah, maybe it does.

“Okay.” So he turns around and erases the letters listed to type up

_Don’t_

_A novel by Louis Tomlinson_

And he’s never going to ask Louis to fill in all of the blanks, but.

\---

The book wasn’t all that great, but he hands it back to Zayn with a loud, “I adored it!” and Zayn rolls his eyes knowingly as he lights up another cigarette. Harry stares intently, probably looks a bit too focused because

“Can I help you with something?”

So Harry shakes his head no and sits down on the concrete.

“Guess what Perrie and Danielle said yesterday.”

“No.”

“They told me I should talk to Louis one day.”

Zayn smiles fondly, leaning down and resting his upper back on the bricks, “You seem to have that covered.”

Harry grins brightly, nodding quickly as he rocks back and forth to an unknown tune.

\---

“I’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

Harry spins in his chair with the laptop seated firmly on his lap, “I’ve finished a poem.”

“Can I read it?”

Harry sighs introspectively, shaking his head with finality, “No.”

“Why not?” Louis’ spread out on the bed, legs apart wide and his jeans are clinging to him and Harry wants nothing more than to wrap this boy’s thighs around his face while his tongue-

Harry shrugs, pushing the screen back to get a better view, “I don’t know if it’s good enough.”

“It probably is.”

Harry smirks, but his answer maintains. He doesn’t think this will ever stop, or.

Well, he prays it doesn’t. It’s too _easy._ Too _simple._ They aren’t expected to confront each other at school, they aren’t expected to disagree once in a while even though they never seem to agree on things, either. They’re easy to see, both of them sprawled out for the other to watch and keep wary of though neither have found that they need to. This routine of Louis walking across the street to lay on Harry’s bed and mumble incoherent thoughts into his comforter (words that Harry brings to sleep) while Harry struggles to write poetry is _nice._ It’s _mandatory._

And he doesn’t think either of them have a problem with that.

\---

“You’re too late, babe.”

Harry looks up from his meal, watching Perrie with wide eyes as she gestures to Louis, “He’s got himself a girlfriend.”

Harry mules the though over, turns it into things that it’s not and twists it into shapes he wishes it was before throwing away his lunch unfinished. He doesn’t have an appetite left, and he knows that Danielle and Perrie understand that (but, at the same time, see how all of this was preventable.)

\---

Harry had stumbled through the rest of the day with as little thought as he could manage, and he’s pretty sure he’s prepared for this. And it’s apparent that Louis isn’t as soon as he steps through the front door and Harry grips his hand tightly and marches him up the stairs. Louis looks up at him with excitement flooding his eyes when Harry shoves him on the bed, but it’s blinked away when, “You have a girlfriend?”

“What?”

“Perrie said you got a girlfriend. Without telling me, I might add.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh.” And the poem flows out pretty easily that night.

\---

Harry eyes the brick wall with thought before, “I’m done with this.”

Zayn peers up from the sidewalk, lips pursed, “Of what?”

“Everything.”

Zayn scoffs, pressing his cigarette into the grass, “No, you aren’t.”

“And why not?”

“Your story isn’t finished.” He picks at a few string hanging off of his jeans and tries to snap them off without tearing a hole, “You have questions you need to answer.”

Harry knows Zayn probably pulled that from a book, but, “Okay, Zayn.”

“Okay.”

\---

“I want to write a poem.”

Harry nods, smiling contentedly, “Okay.”

“Help me.”

Harry laughs, giddy at the thought of pulling Louis into the same trance he’s been stuck in for the past year, “You need a topic.”

“And what would that be?”

“Anything you’re passionate about.”

Louis shrugs indifferently and _well, that answers that,_ so, “Pick anything.”

“I-“ He sighs laying back down, shaking his head, “Never mind, I give up.”

“No, no! You were almost there.” Harry sits back, too, the chair creaking. Louis leans his head back and Harry wants nothing more than to mark his neck with thoughts of _please, please, please,_ because that’s all he can really think of right now.

“I don’t know. What do I write about?”

“Anything!”

“Okay. What do I say about it?”

Harry pauses, the question throwing him for a loop as he fiddles with his word documents, reading through his past poems, “How you feel about it, I guess.”

Louis nods, taking the laptop from Harry’s lap and setting his fingers on the letters before freezing again. Harry smiles warmly at him, Louis reciprocating, and he stutters through a beginning.

It’s different, being on this end of the keyboard tapping, but it’s nice. It’s better. It’s soothing, and Louis’ focused eyes and soft hair add to the atmosphere, so he sits back and watches patiently.

“Done?”

Harry takes the laptop back, and

“It’s bad, I know, but.”

_Lamp_

_By Louis Tomlinson_

_You are a lamp._

_You really don’t play as much of a purpose in my life as you think you do._

_I hate you._

 

“You hate lamps?”

“I felt like this was a ‘go big or go home’ situation.”

Harry laughs, shaking his head fondly before,

“I know it’s bad. I wish I could write, I mean.” He looks up from his lap and cocks his head, “I’ve seen you. You obviously really enjoy this, and I want to share that with you, but it’s hard. It really is.”

Harry stands up and sits next to Louis to set his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and he hopes it comes off a lot friendlier than his intentions were, “Just let the ideas come to you.”

Louis nods, staring at the keyboard, “Show me yours.”

Harry’s hand stutters, but he pulls up an old one regardless (one of the few that didn’t relate to anything Louis understood or would recognize)

_I want to take all of my unknowns,_

_The things I haven’t tried,_

_Haven’t done,_

_Haven’t thought_

_And take them out to a coffee shop,_

_I haven’t visited_

_And give them a pen to write,_

_What I haven’t written._

_To take each letter,_

_Each sound,_

_Each vowel they whisper,_

_And spell them in strokes,_

_From an ink pen,_

_Drawing things,_

_I haven’t drawn._

“It’s nice.” Louis smiles, “I want to try again.”

“Alright, you try.” And maybe it was the focus written all over Louis’ features, or the intensity of Harry’s satisfaction of finally dragging Louis in with him, or maybe it was something entirely undefined, but regardless, Harry turned Louis’ face and brushed his lips against Louis’ softly, carefully, like he was afraid to break his train of thought.

Neither of them spoke, both thinking entirely different things that would suffice on a piece of paper, and, in Louis’ case, would probably create a poem to be proud of, but they weren’t thinking about that.

They weren’t thinking about what this would look like materialized, because this wasn’t something to record. It was something to witness in the moment, something to hold, something to freeze in midair, a feeling you want to keep suspended because maybe it’ll last longer if there’s no one to taint it.

Louis smiles, turning back to the computer and Harry cuddles into his side, sighing. He types gibberish onto the screen proudly, and _yeah, this can work._

**Author's Note:**

> I just realized that the first fic I posted (but me i'm not a gamble, you can count on me to split) is kind of an angsty ending to this fic and I think that's funny because I wrote that first.
> 
> AHAHHAAHHA (I'm so lonely)


End file.
